21 ms·

It’s disappointing news but the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience. To me the most interesting part wa

It’s disappointing news but the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience. To me the most interesting part was everyone talking about potential consequences, uses, the order of magnitude improvements we’d see in certain costs or areas. Pumps, MRIs, power grids, chips, etc. Great reminder what materials science can do to some underlying economics.

Waterluvian 3y ago
Agreed! There's this bizarre reaction I see from many where they see the excitement and curiosity and hopefulness as a form of error and source of embarrassment. When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism, it's a powerful opportunity to get people engaged in imagining a different world. I had all kinds of exciting conversations about what a validated, commercially viable LK-99 could produce. Why would I ever be inclined to feel that there's pie on my face now that we've got fairly strong evidence refuting the claims?
- archepyx 3y ago
  HN discussion did not particlarly have "reasonable skepticism". This is probably because people (i) were not aware that there had been many other hypes about RTSC before but less publicly visible all proved to be false, (ii) not being able to accurately judge the technical quality of the initial evidence, (iii) uncritically believing that the data in the initial preprints was proof for superconductivity because their authors said so.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    I find it perilous to treat an entire community as it if has one voice. Ie. "the HN discussion" as a singular entity with a singular binary state on its skepticism. Someone else could equally claim that the HN community was super pessimistic and skeptical about it, because I certainly saw a lot of that too! While a convenient abstraction, it plays into our biases to notice and remember only some of the discourse. Plus I don't think it's really relevant to what I'm saying given I'm not making a claim about how any specific individual or group reacted, but that it's odd when there's people who treat an optimistic outlook as an error.
    - archepyx 3y ago
      Optimistic outlook without reasonable skepticism is probably at least something you should not strive to achieve.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      > Plus I don't think it's really relevant to what I'm saying given I'm not making a claim about how any specific individual or group reacted, but that it's odd when there's people who treat an optimistic outlook as an error. An optimistic outlook without a semi-plausible basis that you can convincingly elaborate on, or link a vaguely credible source doing so, IS an error, at least going by HN norms.
      - Nevermark 3y ago
        Optimism isn’t gullibility! It is just an attitude that values positive possibilities over fretting about negative possibilities. Especially in cases where there is a small chance of a huge upside, relative to virtually no downside. We didn’t lose any superconductors. :) I don’t recall anyone on HN erroneously declaring the material was definitely a new superconductor before subsequent evidence arrived at a consistent conclusion. There is nothing wrong with optimism.
        MichaelZuo 3y ago
        Perhaps you misunderstood? To clarify, I was referring to "An optimistic outlook" in terms of actual assertions/claims/etc. that are written down on-the-record in public. Of course HN users can have the general abstract sentiment of optimism at anytime in their mind. I don't think there are any norms around internal sentiments.
    - imtringued 3y ago
      This superconductor material was the literal definition of something you forget about and then get pleasantly surprised (not excited) about once it is replicated. For the scientists getting their hands on a breakthrough, the risk and reward was worth it, but for the public at large? No one should care until there are definite results.
  - csours 3y ago
    And the people most likely to join the discussion were the most enthusiastic. It's hard to talk sense when people are excited. See also crypto.
  - javajosh 3y ago
    I feel that I had reasonable skepticism based on the consequences to the scientists if they turned out to be wrong. Korea is not known to be a particularly forgiving or understanding culture, and I suspect that all of these men will be working at a fast food restaurant soon.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    Jeez— it's almost like few people around here are physicists, consider physicists credible on their specialty, saw physicists excited by the potential, and get excited by exciting things. What a shamefully foolish intellectual failure!
    - lamontcg 3y ago
      > saw physicists excited by the potential, Mostly I saw actual physicists who had experience in the field being very skeptical, throwing a lot of cold water on the fire, and pointing out that the original authors looked like amateurs. And then I saw a lot of people with zero experience in the field running around yelling about how they were out of touch, how this was a revolutionary new way that science would progress on twitter, out in the open, etc. People who were skeptical got called all kinds of names. It didn't help that a lot of people on twitter pivoted from crypto-hype to AI-hype to LK99-hype pretty much on a dime. There was also a lot of highly upvoted comments with the usual thoughtleadering style of "let me beak it down for your, here's the ELI5 of what is going on an what the implications will be..." followed by whatever they learned in the past 48 hours from plowing through wikipedia articles. There could be a lesson here about listening very carefully to experts in the field when they give you their opinions. They often sound very highly biased, but there's usually very good reason for that. Once in a lifetime there's the event where some paradigm is overthrown and all the old scientists look a bit foolish because their instincts were to be skeptical -- but those instincts came through a lifetime of correctly being skeptical 999 times out of 1000 about wild claims in their field. This could be a teachable moment that could inform people about climate change, coronavirus and other scientific claims. If you want to disagree with experts in the field you really need to get off your ass, get off twitter and the blogs, and go do the hard work of understanding what the scientists actually know by reading the articles that they publish. They're very often correct and their opinions hold more weight because they've literally spent their lifetime learning and thinking about this one thing. They didn't start learning about superconductivity / viruses / climate last week and you need to do better than some showerthought or wishful thinking that you think proves your viewpoint. But we're not going to do that because its only been a few days and we've literally forgotten about how much flak scientists were getting on here over skepticism towards the initial claims. And I had some of the most positively stupid arguments on here where people were trying to assert that scientific experts needed to express exactly zero bias because they were experts and held to a higher standard than the average moron with no experience who could argue whatever they liked. Engineering a rationale to be able to reject anyone with a strong opinion based on expertise in favor of strong opinions from randos on twitter.
  - addisonl 3y ago
    > HN discussion did not particlarly have "reasonable skepticism". That’s definitely not true despite your attempts to gaslight us.
  - yongjik 3y ago
    On the flip side, there was a lot of what I'd call, hmm, "unreasonable" skepticism. If I had a dime every time someone said "This is fake because Korean culture (blah blah armchair sociology)" ...
  - kergonath 3y ago
    > HN discussion did not particlarly have "reasonable skepticism" There was a dose of Dunning-Kruger, and some software engineers telling us how to science, but there was also a lot of engagement and interesting discussions with genuine experts. Overall I found it quite interesting to follow. > uncritically believing that the data in the initial preprints was proof for superconductivity because their authors said so. It had undertones of small team (in a private institution, no less) taking on the stodgy establishment, which is quite popular among some people here. The concepts are also not very difficult to grasp on surface, so a lot of people can form an opinion, however well founded. People complain about peer review and scientific publisher as well. It is not difficult to see how this could push them to champion something that comes from arxiv.
  - plorg 3y ago
    HN demonstrated its common ability to surface prolific posters who identify as autodidacts and appear to have gone on a Wikipedia binge this morning, but who nonetheless speak with a confidence that until now may only have been demonstrated by ChatGPT.
    - morelisp 3y ago
      The absolute worst part is that some of these guys, especially the younger (e.g. fresh grad through ~30) ones, do this in person! I was out drinking with some colleagues a few months ago and I said something offhand in a normal human conversation about wanting to learn more about X, and one guy pulls out his phone and just starts reading me the Wikipedia article about X.
      - plorg 3y ago
        I could personally take or leave live readings of Wikipedia. I wouldn't do it, but I have also gone on my share of solo wiki binges. There's no problem with learning about things. The thing that bothers me is a room full of people with shallow knowledge of a subject who talk over anybody else. I think it's fine to care about things, but I need other people to be able to tune their volume to their level of knowledge and understanding, which you really can't do if you think you know everything.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
  To understand the skeptic's perspective: imagine watching people excitedly discussing a sighting of bigfoot.
- SanderNL 3y ago
  In a world where true dreamers are often sidelined, where the embrace of change is met with resistance, and where society prioritizes incremental economic evolution over the visions of genuine pioneers, we find ourselves amidst signs and patterns all too indicative of a … culture in decline! rock music
- lolinder 3y ago
  In this case, I think the excitement and hopefulness was not dangerous or wrong, but I do see a risk to this kind of preprint hype in other contexts. During COVID there were multiple cases like this where a study got a lot of hype and discussion from non-experts and turned into "the science says X", when in fact the science was as of yet extremely unsettled. Sure enough, as the experts came to a consensus it rarely matched the public's initial perception, which led to a lot of confusion, conspiracy theories, and fingerpointing. Science-as-spectator-sport is fun, but I worry about the impact it will have on society as a whole and on the execution of science in particular. How many research decisions will be influenced by the possibility of going viral? How many bad decisions will be made as a result of pressure from millions of non-experts who briefly become armchair X-ologists?
  - okamiueru 3y ago
    I think this kind of excitement followed up with "wasn't anything after all" is both dangerous and wrong. When science is done badly (which arguably shouldn't be considered science), which then leads the public to have elevated expectations, only then for science to be done right and disprove and reject the original "findings", public trust in science is ever so slightly damaged.
    - tysam_and 3y ago
      I think you're conflating PR with the science underneath. PR is something we cannot control -- and avoiding releasing results in a (semi-vain?) attempt to control PR arguably does more harm than releasing them does. The sea makes waves as it will. We can moderate as much as we are able. I think the rest is simply a matter of accepting that things happen as they do out of our control. We can only truly impact ---- and even then, not necessarily guaranteed! D: ---- -- in some potentially very small part -- whatever sphere is around us, and I feel that that's a collective individual responsibility.
      - _lqaf 3y ago
        Furthermore, preemptively reacting to expected third-party behaviors is doomed. Journalists are going to write nonsense, hype-filled science articles. PR flacks are going to hype puff newswire blurbs. Why? Because that's what they're paid to do. You can curse the existence of bad incentives, if you want annoying ideologues to call you a communist. Or you can hire your own PR flacks. Because worrying about how people will react to what you're doing is PR, and going up against professionals without your own is like going to court without a lawyer. Or you can just, you know, do science, accept that people suck sometimes, and get on with your life.
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  > There's this bizarre reaction I see from many where they see the excitement and curiosity and hopefulness as a form of error and source of embarrassment. When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism... Kinda buried the lede there. A lot of folks around here and in my own orbit were practicing the former while excluding the latter, or worse, were taking shots at people trying to inject some level of rationality into the conversation. Heck, some folks even went so far as to refer to those types of counterpoints/comments as just a "bizarre reaction"...
- kergonath 3y ago
  > There's this bizarre reaction I see from many where they see the excitement and curiosity and hopefulness as a form of error and source of embarrassment. What the general public does not see it the regular flood of papers that pretend to change the world and that turn out to be bogus. So, from an insider point of view, the issue is that what we are supposed to avoid (crack pot theories becoming mainstream or getting too much traction) happened in a spectacular fashion. So a lot of people get excited about nothing and then end up distrusting the scientific process itself (“they don’t know what they’re doing”, “they make everything up”, “they write a lot of nonsense”, etc). In this case, I think it turned out to be a good thing. People got excited, some of them thought about possible implication, others managed to pick up some notions of material science. The enthusiasm and activity from people trying to replicate and investigate the material was heart-warming. But yeah, it was bound to finish like that. > Why would I ever be inclined to feel that there's pie on my face now that we've got fairly strong evidence refuting the claims? You really, really don’t want to be seen as a crack pot when your funding and career depend on how external people evaluate your work. You also really, really don’t want to have to retract a paper because you’ve missed something obvious. Retraction is a traumatic process even if you are in good faith. This is sidestepped by releasing preprints (so no peer review and no risk of retraction). But at the same time this is a reason why outlandish preprints tend not to be taken too seriously. There is less incentives to get it right.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  > There's this bizarre reaction I see from many where they see the excitement and curiosity and hopefulness as a form of error and source of embarrassment. When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism, it's a powerful opportunity to get people engaged in imagining a different world. This should be taken in the context of room temperature superconductors being notorious physics vaporware along with practically useful advances in quantum computers and useful fusion. What these have in common is a sort of holy grail status, where it's obvious they'd be a revolutionary complete game changer. Not that any of these things are obviously impossible, there's just been so many instances of discoveries in these areas that have failed to replicate that there's inevitably a lot of eye rolling in physics when these types of findings are announced.
- JeremyNT 3y ago
  > When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism, it's a powerful opportunity to get people engaged in imagining a different world. I feel like this line is doing a lot of lifting in your comment. The problem is that as lay people we are completely unequipped to gauge a claim like this. I followed along on HN and there were plenty of posts by people who were giving LK-99 crazy odds of success, fueled in no small part by viral videos of outright hoaxes from pseudonymous "researchers." It's fun, in a science fiction-y way, to speculate on what a material with the supposed properties might have meant for the world, but the degree of skepticism that should have been applied was lacking for many. There's a tendency on HN and similar forums to devour new developments - almost a fanaticism about learning the newest/latest/best before the general public. But in this case, a truly extraordinary claim had been proposed, and it was even published without the researchers' consent. There was precious little reason to give it any attention at all at that phase. If people had viewed LK-99's properties as "almost surely science fiction" all along, I could find myself agreeing with you, but that's really not how this played out. Sadly this event showed there's a market for hyping up weak claims that people will be poor at evaluating, and I guess we can probably expect more of them.
  - acqq 3y ago
    > Sadly this event showed there's a market for hyping up weak claims that people will be poor at evaluating I don't see it as in any way an unique event, and also not unique for the enthusiasm seen on this site. The "believers" in most of the hypes typically aren't cured fast, as the article notes: "While some commentators have pointed to the LK-99 saga as a model for reproducibility in science, others say that it’s an unusually swift resolution of a high-profile puzzle. "Often these things die this very slow death...""
  - ummonk 3y ago
    What's "crazy odds of success" to you?
  - hackerlight 3y ago
    The tone here on HN was very similar to the tone of a lot of credible physicists. Just because it turned out to be not superconducting doesn't mean that the people you are criticising were wrong to think what they thought given the available information at the time.
- ryanSrich 3y ago
  My only gripe was the VCs declaring superconductivity without any evidence. They’re so quick to follow the heard and jump on trends that they do zero diligence in just waiting to see if something is legitimate or not. People being hopefully and discussing possible solutions is not a problem. But VCs declaring that it’s the future and you’re falling behind if you’re not working on it is the problem.
- fasterik 3y ago
  Excitement and curiosity about science is a good thing, but hyping up dubious claims and low quality research is not. I don't know who to blame in this case; I'm not sure whether it's the researchers, science journalism, social media dynamics, or a combination of all those things. But it doesn't seem healthy to have the general public incentivizing scientists to rush out early results with sensationalist claims. Real science takes years to validate results and a lot of that happens behind closed doors, as it should. I think the public reaction in this case is a symptom of a problem with our information ecosystem that extends beyond science. Just because something is fun to participate in in the moment doesn't mean it's not harmful to the underlying scientific/political/social process.
- araes 3y ago
  Another point is: It's properties might still be interesting (possibly amazing, just not a superconductor). A significant reduction in room temperature resistance would still be incredible, even if it wasn't a "room temperature superconductor." Might still enable a lot of those "exciting conversations." Just not some binary yes/no computer holy grail. Also, big effect was scientists went "Whoa. There's a whole mode/regime of resistance change we never really looked at." The modeling papers that came out almost immediately were really interesting. Might still have cool applications.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
earthboundkid 3y ago
The real superconductors were the friends we made along the way.
- SilasX 3y ago
  "Don't you guys get it? We did find a room-temperature superconductor! It was us -- conducting teamwork, with no resistance." Sitcom's live studio audience: "Awwwwwww!"
  - Galacta7 3y ago
    (Or more likely) Live audience: "Ohmmmmmm!"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
baron816 3y ago
It was kind of like thinking about winning the lottery—the fun is in the fantasy of it.
imtringued 3y ago
I don't know what you are talking about. This material was never going to revolutionize anything even if it was a superconductor. What you call fun to witness was to me just another episode of "Mat Ferrell's Undecided" except on HN. Also, you can't solve the most important economic problems through technology anyway. How is a superconductor going to decrease your rent?
- dekhn 3y ago
  Room temp Superconductors, along with fusion, would affect the economy profoundly. What the exact effect on rent would be is hard to predict but under the "post-scarcity society" mental construct, having infinite energy at zero cost (amortized) would presumably make the price of housing change.
  - consilient 3y ago
    Room temperature superconductors would not give us zero-cost energy any time soon. Even if one had a high enough critical current to be used in transmission lines (which is not a given), transmission losses are under 10% in modern grids.
    - Dan_Sylveste 3y ago
      > transmission losses are under 10% in modern grids Modern grids are designed to keep those losses down. If the losses weren't a factor the grids would be designed differently. Very differently. As in, North Africa would be so full of solar panels the generating fields would be visible from space.
  - maleldil 3y ago
    How would room temperature superconductors lead to a post-scarcity society?
    - dekhn 3y ago
      makes it easy to deliver power from huge centralized fusion reactors to the edge. It is neither sufficient, nor necessary, but could be a useful thing to have.
MiguelHudnandez 3y ago
I enjoy the optimistic takes as well. I think it's really fun to imagine incredible new materials that change our baseline capabilities in design and manufacturing. All that said, there's also a case for saving all that energy by seeking out skeptical points of view. See thunderf00t's video from 5 days ago: https://youtu.be/p3hubvTsf3Y https://youtu.be/p3hubvTsf3Y All in all, I appreciate that so many people are enthusiastic about one thing in particular: replicating results. So many people will take a press release or an academic paper at face value. But the real value is in replicating the results.
- gus_massa 3y ago
  The analysis in the video is good, like most of his videos. But I hope someone makes a roge tldwthunderf00t channel, that cut all the parts he repeats and when he laugh of people. A video with the same content and 1/2 of the length would be better.
baby 3y ago
+1. I’m wondering how many people will become physicist due to this wave of exciting news :) we’re not getting superconductors today, but we might get less “oh my god the earth is doomed humans are horrible” and more “I’m optimistic about the future of the human race”
- kergonath 3y ago
  As a practising material physicist, I am very enthusiastic about the progress of knowledge in my field and human curiosity and ingenuity, and also very pessimistic about the outlook for our various civilisations and appalled by human carelessness, shortsightedness, and selfishness. My long term pessimism comes partly from the fact that I know what is behind the magical technologies that are supposed to save us, which is why I am very skeptical about them. I am also very doubtful about our ability to make the right decisions in difficult times and under severe constraints. But hey, I do have a cool, interesting, and enjoyable job.
slashdev 3y ago
I think it’s fair to say that even as a failure, it’s likely to stimulate much more attention, funding, and research in the area of high temperature superconductors going forward. That’s great.
- hcks 3y ago
  Please explain the mechanism by which a short lived twitter craze among web developers will translate into increased “attention funding and research”
xwdv 3y ago
I disagree. I get pissed off when revolutionary scientific news is brought to me only to turn out to be some bogus crap. I don’t care about the replication and peer review process, it’s not fun, it’s banal. I would much rather have preferred to learn about LK-99 once it was confirmed to be a room temp superconductor, and if it wasn’t then I’d rather never hear about it. Now I have to walk back explanations I gave to various people and explain LK-99 actually isn’t special at all. I will look like a god damn idiot. The whole time LK-99 was in the news, we were wringing our hands about potential uses and the impact it would have on our world. For once it seemed maybe there was hope that we’d see exciting times again with exponential advances in technology. That dream has now been thoroughly eradicated. By the time a true room temp superconductor comes out, it probably won’t be in our lifetimes.
- hirsin 3y ago
  It sounds like you were explaining it to people before it was confirmed - why did you do that? I don't really grok the emotional connection you seem to be talking about - how does someone pin their mental state so much on something like this (unconfirmed research)? Is it the idea that there might be something great happening, and that we might get the chance to live in exciting times? I could see people wanting to believe in that opportunity.
  - penjelly 3y ago
    we already live in exciting times. I wouldnt blame someone for explaining an idea that the scientists themselves came forward and claimed it as a valid result either. Blind optimism is NOT good in my opinion even if intentions are good
- imchillyb 3y ago
  > I will look like a god damn idiot. Pride isn’t a good look or smell. Try humility instead. You may not like to eat humble pie, but others love to watch that. Also, perhaps some introspection would give nuance to why being wrong bothers you so much.
- DirkH 3y ago
dheera 3y ago
> were responsible for the sharp drops in electrical resistivity and partial levitation over a magnet Are these properties still useful? If something can levitate without being a superconductor it is already useful for a LOT of things.
- penjelly 3y ago
  diamagnetic material exist, and no theyre not nearly as useful as a superconductor with 0 resistance.
  - dheera 3y ago
    Diamagnetic levitation is extremely weak, which makes it much less practically useful, and also reduces its entertainment value (if you can levitate things 2 cm above the surface the 2 billion children in the world will be all over the stuff; the 1-2 mm you can get with bismuth diamagnetism isn't particularly impressive.
    - hgsgm 3y ago
      I don't know all these subtleties, but maglev trains are awesome.
      - kergonath 3y ago
        Maglev trains do not use diamagnetism or this kind of permanent magnets. They use electromagnets and sometimes much stronger rare-earth magnets, which are much more convenient and effective. Some of them do use superconductors, though, AFAIK.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  Not really, what really matters is what weight it can actually support. Most of these materials can barely levitate a few grams - way below any kind of useful application except for maybe gimmicky toys.
- kergonath 3y ago
godelski 3y ago
> but the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience. I was really elated to see how people were so interested and getting to see what peer review in science actually looks like. How in the real world it is done outside of journals and conferences, which people frequently give the misnomer "peer review." I hope people will walk away from this experience with a better understanding of how science works and why replication is such a critical aspect of it. Because the truth is that our academic incentive structure has generally fallen out of alignment with the actual goals of science.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Unfortunately I don't think we got "to see what peer review in science actually looks like" because this was such an unusual deal. The amount of interest and excitement gave us the ideal amount of peer review/reproduction. For the vast majority of things nobody even tries to reproduce it, and many of the publishers don't even provide the tools needed to do so.
  - godelski 3y ago
    Yeah, I agree that for the vast majority of things most people don't try. Or at least publicly demonstrate that they tried (key phrasing). But it is also silly to think that 3-5 people sitting at a desk reading a summary of work can validate said work. Really they can only invalidate or specify that it is indeterminate, but neither of these are validation. Which that's a key difference from the general public understanding of "peer review" (meaning journal publication). But it might also be worth noting that often reproduction happens behind the scene. People point to big works like that which comes out of CERN, LIGO, or other massive projects and state that such works cannot be replicated. But actually those have high rates of replication, which is why there are hundreds of authors on the work. For LK-99, people got to see a lot of what is typically done by grad students who never tell the public what they did (or even their community). That the communication between scientists is happening through preprints, email, twitter, and other methods that are not journal publications. Because science happens faster than the journal cycle. Most scientists are reading preprints, and letting the work dictate the signal of validity long before a journal can. But what I was alluding to, which you might have picked up on, is that the reward system we have in place ("publish or perish", h-index, journals, etc) are misaligned as they do not reward this cornerstone of science -- replication -- (typically discourages is) unless there are credible claims of breakthroughs of the highest kind. Maybe we should rethink this system, and I hope that the timing of this along with the other discussions of academic fraud can help people to question the system and metrics that we use to evaluate, and ask if they are actually aligned with the original goals.
amelius 3y ago
This invention almost saved our generation. I mean, our parents invented radar, semiconductors, nuclear energy, etc. For us it's back to building social media, adtech, and similar "technology", I guess.
- gus_massa 3y ago
  White LEDs? When I was young, I wanted tu buy a blue LED but it was too expensive. Now I have white LEDs everywhere. Laser pointers are nice too.
penjelly 3y ago
disagree, the excitement led nowhere. We already have high temp superconductors so even if it was real these applications can/are already handled. Its not harmless either, people invested time, money, and effort. its great to be excited for real science discoveries but hoaxes are not good, and can potentially cripple, crush the industry thats actually developing these things.
- gus_massa 3y ago
  A researcher wasting his/her time in a promising result is business as usual. An important part of the work is to read papers and decide if they are promising enough to try to informaly replicate them and extend them. There are a lot of details to consider. Does it makes sense? Who published it? Did that team has a gopd track record? Where was it published? Did somepne else used the paper as a base for a new paper? How long/much would it take to try? Only after that, researches decide to try it or just send it to the paper bin.
- consilient 3y ago
  > its great to be excited for real science discoveries but hoaxes are not good, There's absolutely no evidence of a hoax. The original authors were sloppy and overeager, not malicious.
  - hilbert42 3y ago
    "The original authors were sloppy and overeager, not malicious" Reckon so, but if they believed they were on the brink of a great discovery and thought they could be beaten to it at any moment, then it's understandable.
oreilles 3y ago
> [...] There was nothing missing from so many beautiful works, except that it was true that the tooth was made of gold. When a goldsmith had examined it, it was found to be gold leaf applied to the tooth with great skill; but books were written before the goldsmith was consulted. > I am not so convinced of our ignorance by the things that are, and whose reason is unknown to us, than by those that are not, and whose reason we find. This means that not only do we not have the principles that lead to the truth, but that we also have others that accommodate the false very well. Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, Histoire des Oracles 1687. Translated with Deepl.
gabagaul 3y ago
[flagged]
jschveibinz 3y ago
On the bright side: when people say “believe in the science,” this is exactly what they should be thinking: challenge. This whole process has been super healthy and similar challenges are important and needed for everything published, not just this particular research area. I might be out in left field, but I read so often that researchers are running out of ideas. What’s wrong with getting a PhD for challenging something already published? It is incredibly valuable to society.
- 93po 3y ago
  Does this extend to climate change science too?
  - salty_biscuits 3y ago
    Yes.
  - belthesar 3y ago
    Sure, but there's a level of entry to the "challenge" call to action. When folks are saying "believe in the science", it also means to believe in the scientific method, which does include challenging observations and independently validating conclusions. A proper challenge requires coming up to the plate, proposing a challenging hypothesis to a given conclusion, and then going through the work required to test your hypothesis, documenting the inputs, the variables, and showcasing your outputs. What this doesn't mean is the average human who does not like the conclusion producing a statement saying "I don't think that's real", or even going so far as to cite data which could appear to refute the conclusion, are producing a challenge to the conclusion. They're just stating an opinion. This isn't designed to be exclusionary, but to ensure that challengers are going through the effort that the producer of the conclusion did. If one is not willing to learn the problem space enough to reasonably challenge the effort, then that challenge is moot.
  - hackerlight 3y ago
    Not too long ago, a creationist would have sarcastically asked "Does this extend to biology too?", and gone away thinking they had made an actual argument.
deleted 3y ago
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aklwiehjra 3y ago
One of the few things I actually remember from undergrad was a presentation freshman year where some famous person said "almost all major leaps in engineering ability come from one of three things: economics of scale, something else (maybe new algorithm? not sure), or a new material that simply has better properties". I don't want to be a materials scientist, but that line got me very interested in materials science and gave me a lot of respect for it. If you find a new material that is 3x better than any other in some way, that unlocks entirely new doors.
hunson_abadeer 3y ago
This is precisely what put me off in these discussions. Not the idea that we might have found a room-temperature superconductor - that part was exciting. It's the part where people confidently talked about its applications without realizing that they probably wouldn't revolutionize CPU performance (Josephson junctions don't seem to work well as non-cryogenic temperatures for reasons unrelated to superconductivity), power grid transmission (transmission lines are already pretty efficient and we already choose less efficient materials for cost), or energy storage (LK-99 would likely have a fairly modest current limit before it stops superconducting). LK-99 would have interesting applications, known and unknown, but we have a pretty good understanding of superconductors based on 100 years of practical research, and I find this kind of instant punditry pretty tiresome.
- burnished 3y ago
  Interesting, from what I saw a lot of people got informed on why those overly confident predictions were drek - I don't know that I have seen a claim go unchallenged. Which seems ideal to me. Very educational.
  - cogman10 3y ago
    It was like stomping out weeds and it wasn't always well received. I hope that those that got dashed (and observed the dashing) take a step back the next time something from "FuturistSuperScienceNews.com" or whatever pops up touting a revolutionary XYZ. Those sites are like 99% trash that train their readers to distrust science when their clickbate articles don't pan out. If I were conspiracy minded, I'd swear they exist to build out a mistrust in institutions.
- raphlinus 3y ago
  Amen. When someone does the math and adds up the winners and losers in all this, one clear winner will be this video from Asianometry, entitled The History of Superconductors (Before LK-99)[1]. It only lightly touched on LK-99 itself, but did an excellent job going through the actual science-based history of superconductors, covering in particular detail previous hype waves. A major point is that the YBCO superconductors, while an amazing scientific discovery, haven't had revolutionary applications, and have only lightly displaced lower temperature (niobium-titanium metal alloy) superconductors in applications requiring generating strong magnetic fields, including MRI machines. For the curious, [2] goes into considerable detail on potential applications and challenges for HTSC in MRI. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUczYHyOhLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUczYHyOhLM [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5472374/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5472374/
oblio 3y ago
> Great reminder what materials science can do to some underlying economics. Just economics? :-)) Materials science is practically <<civilization>>. The Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age. The other axes are: energy production, transportation improvements. But even those frequently come from materials science. The steam engine needed mass production of high quality steel, etc.
xattt 3y ago
It sounds a lot like the thoughts that one might have before the draw for a large lottery jackpot. It’s a fun exercise, but it’s fantastical thinking.
knodi123 3y ago
> the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience I understand a lot of people were more cautious and jaded, but this was my first go-round on the science news hype-mobile. I was really, really excited! It was a real emotional rollercoaster (if you imagine a rollercoaster that takes a couple of weeks to get anywhere).
Accujack 3y ago
It's not over yet, at least not definitively. Nature Magazine like every other source so far is basing its comments on the attempted replications using the leaked paper. It's considered fairly certain at this point that the paper was incomplete/not enough to duplicate the material. The full paper with the original samples were reportedly sent to Korea University of Science and Technology for examination. That lab group has only so far verified the structure of the material, no word on whether they've replicated it or its actual properties based on replicated samples or the original samples. Until we hear from them, everyone (including Nature) is just guessing.
- hilbert42 3y ago
  Of course there's some sour grapes in Nature's article, as arxiv.org has had the best exposure it's likely to get in years. The more that publish there, the fewer who publish behind firewalls, etc. For starters, Nature's reprints are hellishly expensive.
  - pbmonster 3y ago
    > arxiv.org has had the best exposure it's likely to get in years. The more that publish there, the fewer who publish behind firewalls We're talking about condensed matter physics here, arxiv needs zero exposure in this field. It is extremely common to publish on arxiv first and only then begin the process of submitting the same manuscript to be published (and peer reviewed) in a journal. And while there are still some authors that skip over publishing pre-prints at all, there's no serious arxiv competitor if you do decide to publish pre-prints. It is a de-facto monopoly in this field.
    - hilbert42 3y ago
      True, but it's given the site more exposure in the general sense, it's now quoted by outlets that probably hadn't heard of it before this 'excitement'. (That can only help in the long run, one day Elbakyan mightn't need to do what she does.)
  - jacquesm 3y ago
NovaDudely 3y ago
While I was very skeptical of the base claims of LK99 (extrodinary evidence required), I did sort of fall a little bit for the hype of what this kind of material could be used for. Mostly in terms of computer clock rates and used in batteries. Turns out what seemed intuitive at first was mostly wrong. But then that is what happens a lot in various fields. Something that seems obvious isn't done because those that actually know the field can explain all the details you didn't know. Anyone here in programming have had that battle with upper management... Hey lesson learned in this case. Don't always assume you have a grasp of all the details.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  I'd settle for regular evidence: a nice paper from a reputable lab that replicates the findings of the original team. Extraordinary evidence would be required for non standard model physics or aliens or something like that.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  Serious question: why is extraordinary evidence required? Room temperature superconductivity doesn't break any (known) laws of physics, doesn't introduce new particles or fields, etc, doesn't require an unprecedentedly sensitive instrument (like LIGO/VIRGO)... There's a lot of modern physics, chemistry, biology that is uncritically accepted which I think deserves a somewhat higher bar of skepticism than RTSC
Nurbek-F 3y ago
I told my brother too, the point is he doesn't even remember anymore or care. Most people are, until they see it in a real application
ergocoder 3y ago
The most interesting part is one of the researchers believed it was Nobel's prize worthy, went rogue, and submitted a paper with only 3 authors to claim the credit of this invention. Coincidentally, Nobel's prize only awards at max 3 people. Soon after the other researchers realized and published a 6-author paper only hours after. What a drama.
- michelb 3y ago
  Yes, this really showed me what a great deal of science is nowadays. Backstabbing to publish, get credit/funding, rinse/repeat, so you can continue to marginally exist. Would be nice if we could just return to do actual science, for, you know, science and the advancement of our species.
cf141q5325 3y ago
>Great reminder what materials science can do to some underlying economics. I had a similar experience when reading up on the history of gyroscopes recently. Its absolutely amazing to watch the advances and miniaturization from mechanical to optical to now micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Watching the giant machines from the space race first shrink, then get replaced by light traveling fiber optics to now vibrating bits of silicone. With the prices imploding as a result. Still havent fully grasped the implications of older lithography systems being now usable for electro, mechanical and optical applications. Especially as they seem to be quite affordable, especially with multi-project wafers. With open source project even getting chips for free via google.
al_be_back 3y ago
>> to me the most interesting part was everyone talking about potential consequences no need for a science paper for that, they should've written science fiction or created an educational documentary.

Waterluvian 3y ago

Agreed! There's this bizarre reaction I see from many where they see the excitement and curiosity and hopefulness as a form of error and source of embarrassment. When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism, it's a powerful opportunity to get people engaged in imagining a different world. I had all kinds of exciting conversations about what a validated, commercially viable LK-99 could produce. Why would I ever be inclined to feel that there's pie on my face now that we've got fairly strong evidence refuting the claims?

archepyx 3y ago
HN discussion did not particlarly have "reasonable skepticism". This is probably because people (i) were not aware that there had been many other hypes about RTSC before but less publicly visible all proved to be false, (ii) not being able to accurately judge the technical quality of the initial evidence, (iii) uncritically believing that the data in the initial preprints was proof for superconductivity because their authors said so.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  I find it perilous to treat an entire community as it if has one voice. Ie. "the HN discussion" as a singular entity with a singular binary state on its skepticism. Someone else could equally claim that the HN community was super pessimistic and skeptical about it, because I certainly saw a lot of that too! While a convenient abstraction, it plays into our biases to notice and remember only some of the discourse. Plus I don't think it's really relevant to what I'm saying given I'm not making a claim about how any specific individual or group reacted, but that it's odd when there's people who treat an optimistic outlook as an error.
  - archepyx 3y ago
    Optimistic outlook without reasonable skepticism is probably at least something you should not strive to achieve.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    > Plus I don't think it's really relevant to what I'm saying given I'm not making a claim about how any specific individual or group reacted, but that it's odd when there's people who treat an optimistic outlook as an error. An optimistic outlook without a semi-plausible basis that you can convincingly elaborate on, or link a vaguely credible source doing so, IS an error, at least going by HN norms.
    - Nevermark 3y ago
      Optimism isn’t gullibility! It is just an attitude that values positive possibilities over fretting about negative possibilities. Especially in cases where there is a small chance of a huge upside, relative to virtually no downside. We didn’t lose any superconductors. :) I don’t recall anyone on HN erroneously declaring the material was definitely a new superconductor before subsequent evidence arrived at a consistent conclusion. There is nothing wrong with optimism.
      - MichaelZuo 3y ago
        Perhaps you misunderstood? To clarify, I was referring to "An optimistic outlook" in terms of actual assertions/claims/etc. that are written down on-the-record in public. Of course HN users can have the general abstract sentiment of optimism at anytime in their mind. I don't think there are any norms around internal sentiments.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    This superconductor material was the literal definition of something you forget about and then get pleasantly surprised (not excited) about once it is replicated. For the scientists getting their hands on a breakthrough, the risk and reward was worth it, but for the public at large? No one should care until there are definite results.
- csours 3y ago
  And the people most likely to join the discussion were the most enthusiastic. It's hard to talk sense when people are excited. See also crypto.
- javajosh 3y ago
  I feel that I had reasonable skepticism based on the consequences to the scientists if they turned out to be wrong. Korea is not known to be a particularly forgiving or understanding culture, and I suspect that all of these men will be working at a fast food restaurant soon.
- chefandy 3y ago
  Jeez— it's almost like few people around here are physicists, consider physicists credible on their specialty, saw physicists excited by the potential, and get excited by exciting things. What a shamefully foolish intellectual failure!
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    > saw physicists excited by the potential, Mostly I saw actual physicists who had experience in the field being very skeptical, throwing a lot of cold water on the fire, and pointing out that the original authors looked like amateurs. And then I saw a lot of people with zero experience in the field running around yelling about how they were out of touch, how this was a revolutionary new way that science would progress on twitter, out in the open, etc. People who were skeptical got called all kinds of names. It didn't help that a lot of people on twitter pivoted from crypto-hype to AI-hype to LK99-hype pretty much on a dime. There was also a lot of highly upvoted comments with the usual thoughtleadering style of "let me beak it down for your, here's the ELI5 of what is going on an what the implications will be..." followed by whatever they learned in the past 48 hours from plowing through wikipedia articles. There could be a lesson here about listening very carefully to experts in the field when they give you their opinions. They often sound very highly biased, but there's usually very good reason for that. Once in a lifetime there's the event where some paradigm is overthrown and all the old scientists look a bit foolish because their instincts were to be skeptical -- but those instincts came through a lifetime of correctly being skeptical 999 times out of 1000 about wild claims in their field. This could be a teachable moment that could inform people about climate change, coronavirus and other scientific claims. If you want to disagree with experts in the field you really need to get off your ass, get off twitter and the blogs, and go do the hard work of understanding what the scientists actually know by reading the articles that they publish. They're very often correct and their opinions hold more weight because they've literally spent their lifetime learning and thinking about this one thing. They didn't start learning about superconductivity / viruses / climate last week and you need to do better than some showerthought or wishful thinking that you think proves your viewpoint. But we're not going to do that because its only been a few days and we've literally forgotten about how much flak scientists were getting on here over skepticism towards the initial claims. And I had some of the most positively stupid arguments on here where people were trying to assert that scientific experts needed to express exactly zero bias because they were experts and held to a higher standard than the average moron with no experience who could argue whatever they liked. Engineering a rationale to be able to reject anyone with a strong opinion based on expertise in favor of strong opinions from randos on twitter.
- addisonl 3y ago
  > HN discussion did not particlarly have "reasonable skepticism". That’s definitely not true despite your attempts to gaslight us.
- yongjik 3y ago
  On the flip side, there was a lot of what I'd call, hmm, "unreasonable" skepticism. If I had a dime every time someone said "This is fake because Korean culture (blah blah armchair sociology)" ...
- kergonath 3y ago
  > HN discussion did not particlarly have "reasonable skepticism" There was a dose of Dunning-Kruger, and some software engineers telling us how to science, but there was also a lot of engagement and interesting discussions with genuine experts. Overall I found it quite interesting to follow. > uncritically believing that the data in the initial preprints was proof for superconductivity because their authors said so. It had undertones of small team (in a private institution, no less) taking on the stodgy establishment, which is quite popular among some people here. The concepts are also not very difficult to grasp on surface, so a lot of people can form an opinion, however well founded. People complain about peer review and scientific publisher as well. It is not difficult to see how this could push them to champion something that comes from arxiv.
- plorg 3y ago
  HN demonstrated its common ability to surface prolific posters who identify as autodidacts and appear to have gone on a Wikipedia binge this morning, but who nonetheless speak with a confidence that until now may only have been demonstrated by ChatGPT.
  - morelisp 3y ago
    The absolute worst part is that some of these guys, especially the younger (e.g. fresh grad through ~30) ones, do this in person! I was out drinking with some colleagues a few months ago and I said something offhand in a normal human conversation about wanting to learn more about X, and one guy pulls out his phone and just starts reading me the Wikipedia article about X.
    - plorg 3y ago
      I could personally take or leave live readings of Wikipedia. I wouldn't do it, but I have also gone on my share of solo wiki binges. There's no problem with learning about things. The thing that bothers me is a room full of people with shallow knowledge of a subject who talk over anybody else. I think it's fine to care about things, but I need other people to be able to tune their volume to their level of knowledge and understanding, which you really can't do if you think you know everything.
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
To understand the skeptic's perspective: imagine watching people excitedly discussing a sighting of bigfoot.
SanderNL 3y ago
In a world where true dreamers are often sidelined, where the embrace of change is met with resistance, and where society prioritizes incremental economic evolution over the visions of genuine pioneers, we find ourselves amidst signs and patterns all too indicative of a … culture in decline! rock music
lolinder 3y ago
In this case, I think the excitement and hopefulness was not dangerous or wrong, but I do see a risk to this kind of preprint hype in other contexts. During COVID there were multiple cases like this where a study got a lot of hype and discussion from non-experts and turned into "the science says X", when in fact the science was as of yet extremely unsettled. Sure enough, as the experts came to a consensus it rarely matched the public's initial perception, which led to a lot of confusion, conspiracy theories, and fingerpointing. Science-as-spectator-sport is fun, but I worry about the impact it will have on society as a whole and on the execution of science in particular. How many research decisions will be influenced by the possibility of going viral? How many bad decisions will be made as a result of pressure from millions of non-experts who briefly become armchair X-ologists?
- okamiueru 3y ago
  I think this kind of excitement followed up with "wasn't anything after all" is both dangerous and wrong. When science is done badly (which arguably shouldn't be considered science), which then leads the public to have elevated expectations, only then for science to be done right and disprove and reject the original "findings", public trust in science is ever so slightly damaged.
  - tysam_and 3y ago
    I think you're conflating PR with the science underneath. PR is something we cannot control -- and avoiding releasing results in a (semi-vain?) attempt to control PR arguably does more harm than releasing them does. The sea makes waves as it will. We can moderate as much as we are able. I think the rest is simply a matter of accepting that things happen as they do out of our control. We can only truly impact ---- and even then, not necessarily guaranteed! D: ---- -- in some potentially very small part -- whatever sphere is around us, and I feel that that's a collective individual responsibility.
    - _lqaf 3y ago
      Furthermore, preemptively reacting to expected third-party behaviors is doomed. Journalists are going to write nonsense, hype-filled science articles. PR flacks are going to hype puff newswire blurbs. Why? Because that's what they're paid to do. You can curse the existence of bad incentives, if you want annoying ideologues to call you a communist. Or you can hire your own PR flacks. Because worrying about how people will react to what you're doing is PR, and going up against professionals without your own is like going to court without a lawyer. Or you can just, you know, do science, accept that people suck sometimes, and get on with your life.
BaseballPhysics 3y ago
> There's this bizarre reaction I see from many where they see the excitement and curiosity and hopefulness as a form of error and source of embarrassment. When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism... Kinda buried the lede there. A lot of folks around here and in my own orbit were practicing the former while excluding the latter, or worse, were taking shots at people trying to inject some level of rationality into the conversation. Heck, some folks even went so far as to refer to those types of counterpoints/comments as just a "bizarre reaction"...
kergonath 3y ago
> There's this bizarre reaction I see from many where they see the excitement and curiosity and hopefulness as a form of error and source of embarrassment. What the general public does not see it the regular flood of papers that pretend to change the world and that turn out to be bogus. So, from an insider point of view, the issue is that what we are supposed to avoid (crack pot theories becoming mainstream or getting too much traction) happened in a spectacular fashion. So a lot of people get excited about nothing and then end up distrusting the scientific process itself (“they don’t know what they’re doing”, “they make everything up”, “they write a lot of nonsense”, etc). In this case, I think it turned out to be a good thing. People got excited, some of them thought about possible implication, others managed to pick up some notions of material science. The enthusiasm and activity from people trying to replicate and investigate the material was heart-warming. But yeah, it was bound to finish like that. > Why would I ever be inclined to feel that there's pie on my face now that we've got fairly strong evidence refuting the claims? You really, really don’t want to be seen as a crack pot when your funding and career depend on how external people evaluate your work. You also really, really don’t want to have to retract a paper because you’ve missed something obvious. Retraction is a traumatic process even if you are in good faith. This is sidestepped by releasing preprints (so no peer review and no risk of retraction). But at the same time this is a reason why outlandish preprints tend not to be taken too seriously. There is less incentives to get it right.
marginalia_nu 3y ago
> There's this bizarre reaction I see from many where they see the excitement and curiosity and hopefulness as a form of error and source of embarrassment. When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism, it's a powerful opportunity to get people engaged in imagining a different world. This should be taken in the context of room temperature superconductors being notorious physics vaporware along with practically useful advances in quantum computers and useful fusion. What these have in common is a sort of holy grail status, where it's obvious they'd be a revolutionary complete game changer. Not that any of these things are obviously impossible, there's just been so many instances of discoveries in these areas that have failed to replicate that there's inevitably a lot of eye rolling in physics when these types of findings are announced.
JeremyNT 3y ago
> When mixed with an open mind and reasonable skepticism, it's a powerful opportunity to get people engaged in imagining a different world. I feel like this line is doing a lot of lifting in your comment. The problem is that as lay people we are completely unequipped to gauge a claim like this. I followed along on HN and there were plenty of posts by people who were giving LK-99 crazy odds of success, fueled in no small part by viral videos of outright hoaxes from pseudonymous "researchers." It's fun, in a science fiction-y way, to speculate on what a material with the supposed properties might have meant for the world, but the degree of skepticism that should have been applied was lacking for many. There's a tendency on HN and similar forums to devour new developments - almost a fanaticism about learning the newest/latest/best before the general public. But in this case, a truly extraordinary claim had been proposed, and it was even published without the researchers' consent. There was precious little reason to give it any attention at all at that phase. If people had viewed LK-99's properties as "almost surely science fiction" all along, I could find myself agreeing with you, but that's really not how this played out. Sadly this event showed there's a market for hyping up weak claims that people will be poor at evaluating, and I guess we can probably expect more of them.
- acqq 3y ago
  > Sadly this event showed there's a market for hyping up weak claims that people will be poor at evaluating I don't see it as in any way an unique event, and also not unique for the enthusiasm seen on this site. The "believers" in most of the hypes typically aren't cured fast, as the article notes: "While some commentators have pointed to the LK-99 saga as a model for reproducibility in science, others say that it’s an unusually swift resolution of a high-profile puzzle. "Often these things die this very slow death...""
- ummonk 3y ago
  What's "crazy odds of success" to you?
- hackerlight 3y ago
  The tone here on HN was very similar to the tone of a lot of credible physicists. Just because it turned out to be not superconducting doesn't mean that the people you are criticising were wrong to think what they thought given the available information at the time.
ryanSrich 3y ago
My only gripe was the VCs declaring superconductivity without any evidence. They’re so quick to follow the heard and jump on trends that they do zero diligence in just waiting to see if something is legitimate or not. People being hopefully and discussing possible solutions is not a problem. But VCs declaring that it’s the future and you’re falling behind if you’re not working on it is the problem.
fasterik 3y ago
Excitement and curiosity about science is a good thing, but hyping up dubious claims and low quality research is not. I don't know who to blame in this case; I'm not sure whether it's the researchers, science journalism, social media dynamics, or a combination of all those things. But it doesn't seem healthy to have the general public incentivizing scientists to rush out early results with sensationalist claims. Real science takes years to validate results and a lot of that happens behind closed doors, as it should. I think the public reaction in this case is a symptom of a problem with our information ecosystem that extends beyond science. Just because something is fun to participate in in the moment doesn't mean it's not harmful to the underlying scientific/political/social process.
araes 3y ago
Another point is: It's properties might still be interesting (possibly amazing, just not a superconductor). A significant reduction in room temperature resistance would still be incredible, even if it wasn't a "room temperature superconductor." Might still enable a lot of those "exciting conversations." Just not some binary yes/no computer holy grail. Also, big effect was scientists went "Whoa. There's a whole mode/regime of resistance change we never really looked at." The modeling papers that came out almost immediately were really interesting. Might still have cool applications.
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earthboundkid 3y ago

The real superconductors were the friends we made along the way.

SilasX 3y ago
"Don't you guys get it? We did find a room-temperature superconductor! It was us -- conducting teamwork, with no resistance." Sitcom's live studio audience: "Awwwwwww!"
- Galacta7 3y ago
  (Or more likely) Live audience: "Ohmmmmmm!"
deleted 3y ago
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baron816 3y ago

It was kind of like thinking about winning the lottery—the fun is in the fantasy of it.

imtringued 3y ago

I don't know what you are talking about. This material was never going to revolutionize anything even if it was a superconductor. What you call fun to witness was to me just another episode of "Mat Ferrell's Undecided" except on HN. Also, you can't solve the most important economic problems through technology anyway. How is a superconductor going to decrease your rent?

dekhn 3y ago
Room temp Superconductors, along with fusion, would affect the economy profoundly. What the exact effect on rent would be is hard to predict but under the "post-scarcity society" mental construct, having infinite energy at zero cost (amortized) would presumably make the price of housing change.
- consilient 3y ago
  Room temperature superconductors would not give us zero-cost energy any time soon. Even if one had a high enough critical current to be used in transmission lines (which is not a given), transmission losses are under 10% in modern grids.
  - Dan_Sylveste 3y ago
    > transmission losses are under 10% in modern grids Modern grids are designed to keep those losses down. If the losses weren't a factor the grids would be designed differently. Very differently. As in, North Africa would be so full of solar panels the generating fields would be visible from space.
- maleldil 3y ago
  How would room temperature superconductors lead to a post-scarcity society?
  - dekhn 3y ago
    makes it easy to deliver power from huge centralized fusion reactors to the edge. It is neither sufficient, nor necessary, but could be a useful thing to have.

MiguelHudnandez 3y ago

I enjoy the optimistic takes as well. I think it's really fun to imagine incredible new materials that change our baseline capabilities in design and manufacturing. All that said, there's also a case for saving all that energy by seeking out skeptical points of view. See thunderf00t's video from 5 days ago: https://youtu.be/p3hubvTsf3Y https://youtu.be/p3hubvTsf3Y All in all, I appreciate that so many people are enthusiastic about one thing in particular: replicating results. So many people will take a press release or an academic paper at face value. But the real value is in replicating the results.

gus_massa 3y ago
The analysis in the video is good, like most of his videos. But I hope someone makes a roge tldwthunderf00t channel, that cut all the parts he repeats and when he laugh of people. A video with the same content and 1/2 of the length would be better.

baby 3y ago

+1. I’m wondering how many people will become physicist due to this wave of exciting news :) we’re not getting superconductors today, but we might get less “oh my god the earth is doomed humans are horrible” and more “I’m optimistic about the future of the human race”

kergonath 3y ago
As a practising material physicist, I am very enthusiastic about the progress of knowledge in my field and human curiosity and ingenuity, and also very pessimistic about the outlook for our various civilisations and appalled by human carelessness, shortsightedness, and selfishness. My long term pessimism comes partly from the fact that I know what is behind the magical technologies that are supposed to save us, which is why I am very skeptical about them. I am also very doubtful about our ability to make the right decisions in difficult times and under severe constraints. But hey, I do have a cool, interesting, and enjoyable job.

slashdev 3y ago

I think it’s fair to say that even as a failure, it’s likely to stimulate much more attention, funding, and research in the area of high temperature superconductors going forward. That’s great.

hcks 3y ago
Please explain the mechanism by which a short lived twitter craze among web developers will translate into increased “attention funding and research”

xwdv 3y ago

I disagree. I get pissed off when revolutionary scientific news is brought to me only to turn out to be some bogus crap. I don’t care about the replication and peer review process, it’s not fun, it’s banal. I would much rather have preferred to learn about LK-99 once it was confirmed to be a room temp superconductor, and if it wasn’t then I’d rather never hear about it. Now I have to walk back explanations I gave to various people and explain LK-99 actually isn’t special at all. I will look like a god damn idiot. The whole time LK-99 was in the news, we were wringing our hands about potential uses and the impact it would have on our world. For once it seemed maybe there was hope that we’d see exciting times again with exponential advances in technology. That dream has now been thoroughly eradicated. By the time a true room temp superconductor comes out, it probably won’t be in our lifetimes.

hirsin 3y ago
It sounds like you were explaining it to people before it was confirmed - why did you do that? I don't really grok the emotional connection you seem to be talking about - how does someone pin their mental state so much on something like this (unconfirmed research)? Is it the idea that there might be something great happening, and that we might get the chance to live in exciting times? I could see people wanting to believe in that opportunity.
- penjelly 3y ago
  we already live in exciting times. I wouldnt blame someone for explaining an idea that the scientists themselves came forward and claimed it as a valid result either. Blind optimism is NOT good in my opinion even if intentions are good
imchillyb 3y ago
> I will look like a god damn idiot. Pride isn’t a good look or smell. Try humility instead. You may not like to eat humble pie, but others love to watch that. Also, perhaps some introspection would give nuance to why being wrong bothers you so much.
DirkH 3y ago

dheera 3y ago

> were responsible for the sharp drops in electrical resistivity and partial levitation over a magnet Are these properties still useful? If something can levitate without being a superconductor it is already useful for a LOT of things.

penjelly 3y ago
diamagnetic material exist, and no theyre not nearly as useful as a superconductor with 0 resistance.
- dheera 3y ago
  Diamagnetic levitation is extremely weak, which makes it much less practically useful, and also reduces its entertainment value (if you can levitate things 2 cm above the surface the 2 billion children in the world will be all over the stuff; the 1-2 mm you can get with bismuth diamagnetism isn't particularly impressive.
  - hgsgm 3y ago
    I don't know all these subtleties, but maglev trains are awesome.
    - kergonath 3y ago
      Maglev trains do not use diamagnetism or this kind of permanent magnets. They use electromagnets and sometimes much stronger rare-earth magnets, which are much more convenient and effective. Some of them do use superconductors, though, AFAIK.
tsimionescu 3y ago
Not really, what really matters is what weight it can actually support. Most of these materials can barely levitate a few grams - way below any kind of useful application except for maybe gimmicky toys.
kergonath 3y ago

godelski 3y ago

> but the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience. I was really elated to see how people were so interested and getting to see what peer review in science actually looks like. How in the real world it is done outside of journals and conferences, which people frequently give the misnomer "peer review." I hope people will walk away from this experience with a better understanding of how science works and why replication is such a critical aspect of it. Because the truth is that our academic incentive structure has generally fallen out of alignment with the actual goals of science.

freedomben 3y ago
Unfortunately I don't think we got "to see what peer review in science actually looks like" because this was such an unusual deal. The amount of interest and excitement gave us the ideal amount of peer review/reproduction. For the vast majority of things nobody even tries to reproduce it, and many of the publishers don't even provide the tools needed to do so.
- godelski 3y ago
  Yeah, I agree that for the vast majority of things most people don't try. Or at least publicly demonstrate that they tried (key phrasing). But it is also silly to think that 3-5 people sitting at a desk reading a summary of work can validate said work. Really they can only invalidate or specify that it is indeterminate, but neither of these are validation. Which that's a key difference from the general public understanding of "peer review" (meaning journal publication). But it might also be worth noting that often reproduction happens behind the scene. People point to big works like that which comes out of CERN, LIGO, or other massive projects and state that such works cannot be replicated. But actually those have high rates of replication, which is why there are hundreds of authors on the work. For LK-99, people got to see a lot of what is typically done by grad students who never tell the public what they did (or even their community). That the communication between scientists is happening through preprints, email, twitter, and other methods that are not journal publications. Because science happens faster than the journal cycle. Most scientists are reading preprints, and letting the work dictate the signal of validity long before a journal can. But what I was alluding to, which you might have picked up on, is that the reward system we have in place ("publish or perish", h-index, journals, etc) are misaligned as they do not reward this cornerstone of science -- replication -- (typically discourages is) unless there are credible claims of breakthroughs of the highest kind. Maybe we should rethink this system, and I hope that the timing of this along with the other discussions of academic fraud can help people to question the system and metrics that we use to evaluate, and ask if they are actually aligned with the original goals.

amelius 3y ago

This invention almost saved our generation. I mean, our parents invented radar, semiconductors, nuclear energy, etc. For us it's back to building social media, adtech, and similar "technology", I guess.

gus_massa 3y ago
White LEDs? When I was young, I wanted tu buy a blue LED but it was too expensive. Now I have white LEDs everywhere. Laser pointers are nice too.

penjelly 3y ago

disagree, the excitement led nowhere. We already have high temp superconductors so even if it was real these applications can/are already handled. Its not harmless either, people invested time, money, and effort. its great to be excited for real science discoveries but hoaxes are not good, and can potentially cripple, crush the industry thats actually developing these things.

gus_massa 3y ago
A researcher wasting his/her time in a promising result is business as usual. An important part of the work is to read papers and decide if they are promising enough to try to informaly replicate them and extend them. There are a lot of details to consider. Does it makes sense? Who published it? Did that team has a gopd track record? Where was it published? Did somepne else used the paper as a base for a new paper? How long/much would it take to try? Only after that, researches decide to try it or just send it to the paper bin.
consilient 3y ago
> its great to be excited for real science discoveries but hoaxes are not good, There's absolutely no evidence of a hoax. The original authors were sloppy and overeager, not malicious.
- hilbert42 3y ago
  "The original authors were sloppy and overeager, not malicious" Reckon so, but if they believed they were on the brink of a great discovery and thought they could be beaten to it at any moment, then it's understandable.

oreilles 3y ago

> [...] There was nothing missing from so many beautiful works, except that it was true that the tooth was made of gold. When a goldsmith had examined it, it was found to be gold leaf applied to the tooth with great skill; but books were written before the goldsmith was consulted. > I am not so convinced of our ignorance by the things that are, and whose reason is unknown to us, than by those that are not, and whose reason we find. This means that not only do we not have the principles that lead to the truth, but that we also have others that accommodate the false very well. Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, Histoire des Oracles 1687. Translated with Deepl.

gabagaul 3y ago

[flagged]

jschveibinz 3y ago

On the bright side: when people say “believe in the science,” this is exactly what they should be thinking: challenge. This whole process has been super healthy and similar challenges are important and needed for everything published, not just this particular research area. I might be out in left field, but I read so often that researchers are running out of ideas. What’s wrong with getting a PhD for challenging something already published? It is incredibly valuable to society.

93po 3y ago
Does this extend to climate change science too?
- salty_biscuits 3y ago
  Yes.
- belthesar 3y ago
  Sure, but there's a level of entry to the "challenge" call to action. When folks are saying "believe in the science", it also means to believe in the scientific method, which does include challenging observations and independently validating conclusions. A proper challenge requires coming up to the plate, proposing a challenging hypothesis to a given conclusion, and then going through the work required to test your hypothesis, documenting the inputs, the variables, and showcasing your outputs. What this doesn't mean is the average human who does not like the conclusion producing a statement saying "I don't think that's real", or even going so far as to cite data which could appear to refute the conclusion, are producing a challenge to the conclusion. They're just stating an opinion. This isn't designed to be exclusionary, but to ensure that challengers are going through the effort that the producer of the conclusion did. If one is not willing to learn the problem space enough to reasonably challenge the effort, then that challenge is moot.
- hackerlight 3y ago
  Not too long ago, a creationist would have sarcastically asked "Does this extend to biology too?", and gone away thinking they had made an actual argument.

deleted 3y ago

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aklwiehjra 3y ago

One of the few things I actually remember from undergrad was a presentation freshman year where some famous person said "almost all major leaps in engineering ability come from one of three things: economics of scale, something else (maybe new algorithm? not sure), or a new material that simply has better properties". I don't want to be a materials scientist, but that line got me very interested in materials science and gave me a lot of respect for it. If you find a new material that is 3x better than any other in some way, that unlocks entirely new doors.

hunson_abadeer 3y ago

This is precisely what put me off in these discussions. Not the idea that we might have found a room-temperature superconductor - that part was exciting. It's the part where people confidently talked about its applications without realizing that they probably wouldn't revolutionize CPU performance (Josephson junctions don't seem to work well as non-cryogenic temperatures for reasons unrelated to superconductivity), power grid transmission (transmission lines are already pretty efficient and we already choose less efficient materials for cost), or energy storage (LK-99 would likely have a fairly modest current limit before it stops superconducting). LK-99 would have interesting applications, known and unknown, but we have a pretty good understanding of superconductors based on 100 years of practical research, and I find this kind of instant punditry pretty tiresome.

burnished 3y ago
Interesting, from what I saw a lot of people got informed on why those overly confident predictions were drek - I don't know that I have seen a claim go unchallenged. Which seems ideal to me. Very educational.
- cogman10 3y ago
  It was like stomping out weeds and it wasn't always well received. I hope that those that got dashed (and observed the dashing) take a step back the next time something from "FuturistSuperScienceNews.com" or whatever pops up touting a revolutionary XYZ. Those sites are like 99% trash that train their readers to distrust science when their clickbate articles don't pan out. If I were conspiracy minded, I'd swear they exist to build out a mistrust in institutions.
raphlinus 3y ago
Amen. When someone does the math and adds up the winners and losers in all this, one clear winner will be this video from Asianometry, entitled The History of Superconductors (Before LK-99)[1]. It only lightly touched on LK-99 itself, but did an excellent job going through the actual science-based history of superconductors, covering in particular detail previous hype waves. A major point is that the YBCO superconductors, while an amazing scientific discovery, haven't had revolutionary applications, and have only lightly displaced lower temperature (niobium-titanium metal alloy) superconductors in applications requiring generating strong magnetic fields, including MRI machines. For the curious, [2] goes into considerable detail on potential applications and challenges for HTSC in MRI. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUczYHyOhLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUczYHyOhLM [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5472374/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5472374/

oblio 3y ago

> Great reminder what materials science can do to some underlying economics. Just economics? :-)) Materials science is practically <<civilization>>. The Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age. The other axes are: energy production, transportation improvements. But even those frequently come from materials science. The steam engine needed mass production of high quality steel, etc.

xattt 3y ago

It sounds a lot like the thoughts that one might have before the draw for a large lottery jackpot. It’s a fun exercise, but it’s fantastical thinking.

knodi123 3y ago

> the excitement and amount of replication on this paper was pretty fun to witness and experience I understand a lot of people were more cautious and jaded, but this was my first go-round on the science news hype-mobile. I was really, really excited! It was a real emotional rollercoaster (if you imagine a rollercoaster that takes a couple of weeks to get anywhere).

Accujack 3y ago

It's not over yet, at least not definitively. Nature Magazine like every other source so far is basing its comments on the attempted replications using the leaked paper. It's considered fairly certain at this point that the paper was incomplete/not enough to duplicate the material. The full paper with the original samples were reportedly sent to Korea University of Science and Technology for examination. That lab group has only so far verified the structure of the material, no word on whether they've replicated it or its actual properties based on replicated samples or the original samples. Until we hear from them, everyone (including Nature) is just guessing.

hilbert42 3y ago
Of course there's some sour grapes in Nature's article, as arxiv.org has had the best exposure it's likely to get in years. The more that publish there, the fewer who publish behind firewalls, etc. For starters, Nature's reprints are hellishly expensive.
- pbmonster 3y ago
  > arxiv.org has had the best exposure it's likely to get in years. The more that publish there, the fewer who publish behind firewalls We're talking about condensed matter physics here, arxiv needs zero exposure in this field. It is extremely common to publish on arxiv first and only then begin the process of submitting the same manuscript to be published (and peer reviewed) in a journal. And while there are still some authors that skip over publishing pre-prints at all, there's no serious arxiv competitor if you do decide to publish pre-prints. It is a de-facto monopoly in this field.
  - hilbert42 3y ago
    True, but it's given the site more exposure in the general sense, it's now quoted by outlets that probably hadn't heard of it before this 'excitement'. (That can only help in the long run, one day Elbakyan mightn't need to do what she does.)
- jacquesm 3y ago

NovaDudely 3y ago

While I was very skeptical of the base claims of LK99 (extrodinary evidence required), I did sort of fall a little bit for the hype of what this kind of material could be used for. Mostly in terms of computer clock rates and used in batteries. Turns out what seemed intuitive at first was mostly wrong. But then that is what happens a lot in various fields. Something that seems obvious isn't done because those that actually know the field can explain all the details you didn't know. Anyone here in programming have had that battle with upper management... Hey lesson learned in this case. Don't always assume you have a grasp of all the details.

jacquesm 3y ago
I'd settle for regular evidence: a nice paper from a reputable lab that replicates the findings of the original team. Extraordinary evidence would be required for non standard model physics or aliens or something like that.
throwawaymaths 3y ago
Serious question: why is extraordinary evidence required? Room temperature superconductivity doesn't break any (known) laws of physics, doesn't introduce new particles or fields, etc, doesn't require an unprecedentedly sensitive instrument (like LIGO/VIRGO)... There's a lot of modern physics, chemistry, biology that is uncritically accepted which I think deserves a somewhat higher bar of skepticism than RTSC

Nurbek-F 3y ago

I told my brother too, the point is he doesn't even remember anymore or care. Most people are, until they see it in a real application

ergocoder 3y ago

The most interesting part is one of the researchers believed it was Nobel's prize worthy, went rogue, and submitted a paper with only 3 authors to claim the credit of this invention. Coincidentally, Nobel's prize only awards at max 3 people. Soon after the other researchers realized and published a 6-author paper only hours after. What a drama.

michelb 3y ago
Yes, this really showed me what a great deal of science is nowadays. Backstabbing to publish, get credit/funding, rinse/repeat, so you can continue to marginally exist. Would be nice if we could just return to do actual science, for, you know, science and the advancement of our species.

cf141q5325 3y ago

>Great reminder what materials science can do to some underlying economics. I had a similar experience when reading up on the history of gyroscopes recently. Its absolutely amazing to watch the advances and miniaturization from mechanical to optical to now micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Watching the giant machines from the space race first shrink, then get replaced by light traveling fiber optics to now vibrating bits of silicone. With the prices imploding as a result. Still havent fully grasped the implications of older lithography systems being now usable for electro, mechanical and optical applications. Especially as they seem to be quite affordable, especially with multi-project wafers. With open source project even getting chips for free via google.

al_be_back 3y ago

>> to me the most interesting part was everyone talking about potential consequences no need for a science paper for that, they should've written science fiction or created an educational documentary.